Known computer-implemented search tools perform searches for people and display the results in the same manner as they search for documents. Additionally, both people and document search results are returned and displayed in the same result set. This causes confusion for users because they are often searching for either documents or people, but not both.
Also, once presented with a set of results, the user needs to determine the appropriate person to contact from a given set of results. People naturally find ease in contacting people they know or people that know someone they know directly or through an ad hoc brokering process. Unfortunately, existing people search tools do not provide the result set user in a way that allows the user to easily determine if they know the person in the result set or if someone they know knows the person in the result set.
Using known search tools, the user is also often unsure of the relevance of the people returned in the result set and the reason why they were included. People are often organized to work in groups on particular projects or in areas of expertise, or both. Thus, users are often searching for other people who are working on a particular project or who have particular skills. These groups of people can be expressed in a number of ways including common department names, common security profile groups, and common distribution lists. However, conventional search tools do not provide the result set user in a way that allows the user to easily determine the relevance of the people returned in the result set.